time for an apartment update

I remember my first week in my new apartment like it was yesterday. I carefully created a wall gallery with art, photographs and other random items that represented our life path up to that point. We didn’t even have a couch yet, but my walls looked marvelous and I was ever so proud of my hard work. As this year has passed, I’ve designed a retro sports hang out upstairs in the Professor’s loft/office area (complete with vintage boxing, Giants and Yankees signage and prints), and turned our guest room into all things West Virginia, so that our visitors can feel right at home. My kitchen is splashed with a multitude of color thanks to a ridiculously huge Fiestaware collection, and my entryway is even purrfect – decorated with a large framed and matted print of Andy Warhol’s Sam Cat (in orange), funky orange and red woven rugs from the Crate & Barrel Outlet online, and a homemade key holder made by yours truly (give me a piece of scrap wood and a hand saw, I’ll make something out of it!)

A year has already passed, and I’m honestly not finished with the place I fell in love with and moved into last summer; we signed the lease for another year.

And now, it’s time to get to work. Last June, I had a small budget to work with, I wasn’t employed yet, and I was, to put it mildly, stressed the heck out. After I hung the wall gallery, my creativity was pretty much done for. I worked with the decorative items I hauled from my old home in Ohio and added a few new things here and there, but tried to keep the spending to a minimum. Soon, I started working full time, which forced large decorative projects on the backburner. This June, I’m ready to refresh the looks of the place with a few updates and creative projects which I am totally sharing here. Pinterest is, of course, a major source of inspiration; however, I really don’t want to make a bunch of junky DIY stuff that I’ll tire of quickly, so I’m focusing more on color palettes and patterns. I want nice, easily achieved updates that make a strong impact yet are practical and sensible (so there will be no hot pink involved!)

My initial to-do list includes finding some great rugs to perk up our floors, updating the curtains in our living room, searching for a couple of solid, lightweight throws to lay around the living area, finding a long, flat storage piece for the coffee table that doesn’t cost more than the coffee table itself, finding storage baskets that aren’t ugly, galvanized pails!, mounting the small flat screen televisions in both our bedroom and the guest bedroom, and sanding/painting/reenforcing the wobbly old wooden stool that mom and I found at a thrift shop back in November.

Is that enough? Naw, no way – especially when I’m heading to the mountains in July, and will surely find some old treasures to refurbish! I’m happy to say that I made a decent start this past week, by ordering enlargements of some fantastic photos I’ve taken recently (a frame shopping spree is in order for the weekend!) Let’s just hope this whole apartment revamping thing doesn’t turn into a mess. One thing’s for sure: I’ll be putting it out there, for all to see, via Pinterest/Instagram/Facebook/Twitter, so feel free to decorate with me!

Stephanie Snyder

7 Responses

Best place to get picture frames are yard sales……you can get lots of them for a fraction of the price you would pay for just one at a retail store. I’ve gotten some absolutely beatiful ones for pennies on the dollar! Check out yard/garage/moving sales….you’ll be happily surprised!

Try Christmas Tree Store, too. Yeah, I know. It sounds like a trashy place. But you can find some really nice stuff there. I got some beautiful name-brand drapes for our living room and dining room there. All I had to do was pay a friend a small amount to sew the panels together to fit our (huge) windows.

Since Bed, Bath, & Beyond owns Christmas Tree Shop (think they bought it within the last few years), a lot of the houseware type stuff at CTS is overstock from BBB. I found some lovely curtains there for a steal, and picture frames, and other decorative items are also on the cheap.

Gift cards are interchangeable between the stores; I’m not sure about coupons.